"But—but—" began the other.
"Yes, I know," said the man. "It's startling, isn't it? and indeed it's not as easy as it looks. I wasn't at all sure—"
"But, good Lord, I saw—"
"Of course you did; but how do you know you weren't hypnotized?"
Laurie sat down suddenly, unconscious that he had done so. The medium put out his hand for his pipe once more.
"Now, I'm going to be quite honest," he said. "I have quite a quantity of comments to make on that. First, it doesn't prove anything whatever, even if it really happened—"
"Even if it—!"
"Certainly.... Oh, yes; I saw it too; and there's the pencil on the floor"—he stooped and picked it up.
"But what if we were both hypnotized—both acted upon by self-suggestion? We can't prove we weren't."
Laurie was dumb.